(calming music)
What is self-love and how do you truly love yourself?
Self-love is literally the foundation of self-confidence,
self-esteem, and living a happy and fulfilled life.
Self-love is being able to fully accept
and love yourself for the human that you are.
So loving everything about yourself, even your flaws,
even the parts that you're insecure about.
It's recognizing your true worth
that you are ultimately so worthy simply for existing.
You don't have to do anything.
You don't have to be anything or try to change yourself.
You are perfect and whole
and worthy as you are, like perfect in the imperfections.
It's the same way that you look at a puppy or a baby
and you automatically love it.
It's, like, so worthy and beautiful.
They didn't have to do anything
or change anything about themselves.
Just the fact that they exist,
like, they are already so worthy and so lovable.
So you are exactly that lovable.
So today, let's talk about how to truly love yourself
because only with true self-love
can you do anything in life.
Without self-love, you're not gonna get very far.
You're gonna hold yourself back,
lack of self-confidence and self-belief.
So only when you truly love yourself can you go forth
and be confident doing whatever you want with your life,
taking it wherever you want.
Before we begin, a quick break
for today's video sponsor, BetterHelp.
If you want more support in your self-love,
self-worth journey, consider trying therapy.
Therapy has helped me heal from burnouts and anxiety
and release the parts of me that feel like I'm not enough,
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than I was a couple years ago.
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Click the link in the description
or visit BetterHelp.com/aileen.
Clicking that link helps support this channel
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The first most important thing
to transform is your self-talk.
Self-talk is the way
that we talk to ourselves in our mind.
Most of the time we are our own worst critic,
and we're very mean to ourselves.
That voice could come from our insecurity,
it could come from a voice of our parents or our peers.
But the first step to your self-love journey is
recognizing your self-talk.
Recognizing the negative things that you say to yourself
and changing that, changing your thoughts,
changing how you talk to yourself,
which then changes how you feel about yourself.
The truth is, we're all living in our own minds.
For example,
let's say someone is objectively pretty
and people tell them they're pretty,
but if that person, in their mind, doesn't believe that,
if they feel insecure and they think
that they look ugly or terrible, then that is their truth.
It doesn't matter what people on the outside say to them
because they don't believe it,
they believe the thoughts
and the self-talk going on in their head.
This is why having positive self-talk
is so important and it is the first step
to healing this relationship you have with yourself
and to start truly loving yourself,
even if it feels fake or awkward at first.
Because only with repetition
with those thoughts will you start to truly believe them.
This is why positive affirmations
are so popular and so powerful
because literally saying these positive affirmations
to ourselves makes us start to believe that they're true.
Your brain is really funny
how it will believe what you feed it.
That's why you have
to ingrain with repetition,
all of these
positive thoughts,
and you're gonna get through the awkward parts
and eventually it's gonna truly
feel true and it's gonna boost your confidence.
That's where the magic starts.
Number two is shadow work.
So this is where you go deep
as if you're an archeologist.
You uncover the origins of your beliefs,
the origins of, let's say,
your insecurity or why you say mean things about yourself.
Like why do you
believe these things?
Where did they
first come from?
Because a baby
is not born, like, hating themselves.
A baby is not born being mean to themselves.
A baby is just pure and literally a blank slate,
and it is really society or your parents
or environment that kind of started
to form these beliefs about yourself.
So to do shadow work,
you go deep into those origins of those beliefs.
You try to uncover your fears
and why you have certain fears.
You start to face
like the dark, ugly, shadowy parts of yourself,
the parts that you want to avoid or ignore or hide away.
Shadow work is really shining a light on all
of those dark things
and being like, okay,
why am I so messed up in this area?
Why am I so insecure?
And with that awareness,
shift your thinking,
start to release
all of those old beliefs,
start to release
all those old stories that are not serving you.
Shadow work is truly grueling work
and it's probably gonna involve a lot of tears
and a lot of discomfort
because you are making yourself look at the parts
that you tend to avoid or tend to ignore exist.
So it's not something that you do once and you're done.
It's literally a lifelong journey
where you just uncover layer by layer,
maybe through a journaling session or a meditation session,
but you start to understand yourself on a deeper level,
like, why you are the way you are.
And then with your adult mind,
you can understand why the child version
of me formed this belief to protect yourself.
And you start to tell yourself as an adult,
now I don't need that belief anymore.
I don't need to have that same perspective.
I can choose a more positive perspective,
and I can start to let go of that past.
Number three is learning
to genuinely practice forgiveness
and compassion to yourself and to others.
I believe that true love
includes compassion and forgiveness.
Like, if you love someone,
then you are able to forgive them,
and that is one of the hardest things
for a lot of people to do.
A lot of people like to hold grudges
and not be able to forgive people,
but at the end of the day,
like you are only able to love yourself
the way you truly love others and vice versa.
You can only love someone
to an extent that you love yourself.
So practicing forgiveness
and compassion both ways,
like to yourself and to others
will help you develop that ability and that strength
to love unconditionally.
Self-forgiveness
is being able
to forgive yourself for your mistakes, for your flaws,
for your failures, and being able to love yourself.
It is being gentle with yourself
and that's what self-love is all about.
But the other part is also
learning to do this
with other people.
So learning to forgive
other people, people who have hurt you in your life,
and try to find in your heart to find some compassion
for them because each person is a human being.
Humans make mistakes.
Humans are flawed all the time.
When you have compassion,
you can start to learn to forgive people.
That is also a lifelong healing journey.
But if you're able to make progress in that area,
then you're able to love yourself so much more.
Honestly, you're gonna have
so much more inner peace once you learn to forgive others.
You don't wanna hold
that burden in your heart for the rest of your life.
It is actually hurting you.
Not being able to forgive someone
is like drinking poison and hurting yourself
and expecting them to be hurt, expecting them to feel pain.
But the truth is, like, they are detached from this.
Whether they feel
guilty or not, that's on them.
But what you're doing to yourself
is you're hurting yourself.
The longer you refuse to forgive them,
the longer you hold onto that grudge.
Why would you stay suffering when you can just simply
have it in your heart to let it go
and finally feel at peace?
Number four is to step
into your new identity,
the identity of this person
who loves themself fully and unconditionally.
So ask yourself,
how do I love
people in my life?
Like, how do I show love?
How do I treat these people?
Or even if you have pets, right?
Like, how do I treat my pets who I love unconditionally?
Like, give that kind
of love to yourself.
So what would you
do differently if you truly loved yourself?
How would you go about your day?
How would you go about your week?
How would you treat yourself throughout the week?
How would you talk to yourself in your mind?
What would you do for yourself?
Make a list, like, envision what this version
of yourself looks like,
the version that truly loves yourself,
and then start
living as that person.
Start envisioning and imagining
that you are that person right now.
And literally, like, treat yourself.
What do you wanna do today
because you love yourself so much?
How would you carry yourself?
How would you walk in a room?
What would you wear?
All of these things are part
of this new identity that you have to step into
because you are that person.
All right, the next step
is to integrate this new identity.
Start to recognize
the self-love habits, practices,
and routines that this identity, this person does,
and start to integrate that into your life.
So start building those ideal self-care routines,
self-love routines.
Ask, like, what activities make me feel good?
What activities make me feel loved?
What are the habits that someone
who fully loves themself would do, right?
Like, if someone fully loves themself,
they would eat healthier, they would exercise,
they would, like, invest in themselves, right?
Other self-love habits could be journaling,
repeating positive affirmations, meditating, doing yoga,
having full on self-care routines every evening,
doing the most with your skincare.
Whatever it is for you that makes you feel good
and that makes you feel loved,
start to integrate that into your daily lifestyle.
Literally write down what are you gonna do every single day.
What are you gonna do in the week?
And start to build that into your routine.
By the way, a lot of these exercises
and prompts on self-love are in our Artist of Life workbook.
So if you haven't checked it out,
I'll leave the link here and down below.
The Artist of Life Workbook is our guided journal
to help you create your most successful
and intentional year.
There's a whole section on self-love,
refreshing your mindset,
designing your ideal routine from your daily, morning,
evening, routines, and also your weekly routines.
And then it keeps you accountable
throughout the year with, like,
monthly goals and habit tracking, gratitude journaling.
It just has so much jam packed in this one workbook
that it will change your life because it has changed mine.
So I'm fully confident in our workbook.
Definitely check it out. I'll leave the link down below.
The final tip I have for your self-love journey
is to focus on progress, not perfection.
You're gonna be on
this journey for probably the rest of your life.
It's a lifelong journey where our self-love
just continues to deepen and deepen.
And sometimes you just gotta take baby steps.
As long as you have a little bit of progress,
that is already a win.
And remember that
the growth is not always linear.
Sometimes you'll feel really good about yourself,
you'll be like, yeah, I love myself, whatever.
And then you might backtrack.
You have your ups and downs, and that's totally okay
because it's all part of the journey.
What matters is that you know what the goal is.
You know the goal is to have that unconditional,
powerful love for yourself
where you are literally invincible.
Nothing can touch you.
Celebrate your progress
along the way.
Maybe this year
you love yourself so much more than you did last year.
Celebrate all those little wins.
Celebrate your confidence building little by little,
and you'll definitely get to where you wanna be.
All right, now let me
know down below from one to 10,
how far along do you feel like in your self-love journey,
one being the worst, you hate yourself, you're in the dumps,
and then 10 being you're gloriously
loving yourself and shining super bright.
Let me know where you are from one to 10.
I feel like I've been at, like, a 8.5,
like, I've been very feeling good about myself.
There's always room to grow, of course.
So I'll put myself there.
But comment down below where you feel like you are
in that range from one to 10.
All right, that's it for today.
Sending you so much love.
And don't forget to check out
our new Artist of Life Workbook to help you plan your 2024.
Yes, the new year is coming very soon.
I'm planning a lot of new year content
for planning our new year as well.
So get ready for that, and I'll see you in the next one.
Thank you. Bye.
(upbeat music)